MSC Panama

At 53,453 gross tons, MSC Panama is the 9,188th largest of the 84,014 vessels in this registry that report a tonnage. The median across that set is 5,994 GT, so this hull is about 8.9 times the typical vessel on record here. The largest measures 499,167 GT.

Among the 3,881 container ships held here, it ranks 1,233rd by tonnage — larger than 67% of that group. Their median tonnage is 33,698 GT, and the largest tenth begin at 140,096 GT. The flag most often flown by this group is Liberia (498 ships). The yard that appears most often against it is HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, with 348 hulls on record.

MSC Panama was built in 2002, making it 24 years old. It is one of 1,298 hulls in this registry delivered that year, a cohort whose median tonnage is 12,563 GT; within it this ship is the 181st largest. Across the whole of the 2000s the registry holds 18,605 vessels, median 9,957 GT. The median build year across the entire registry is 1995.

The registry attributes 1,092 vessels to HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, with a median tonnage of 65,131 GT, delivered between 1970 and 2025. See the rest of that yard’s output.

At 294.1 m overall, MSC Panama is 72.5 m longer than the 221.6 m median for container ships on record.

IMO numbers are issued in broadly chronological blocks. Within 500 either side of 9231781 this registry holds 76 other vessels, whose median build year is 2001 and which range from 1999 to 2004. That places this hull’s registration in the same part of the series, consistent with its recorded build year of 2002.

Its IMO number, 9231781, carries its own check digit. The first six digits are weighted seven down to two and summed — 9×7 + 2×6 + 3×5 + 1×4 + 7×3 + 8×2 = 131 — and the last digit of that total, 1, must equal the seventh digit, 1. It does, so this number is well formed.